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I loved what Flash used to be. Most people thought it was proprietary stuff. The program was. It's language was not. And damn, did we have fun together! We rendered vector graphics from code and pushed perlin noise into bitmaps while the HTML guys were still struggling with rounded corners. Oh, those bezier curves we dreamed up out of thin lines of code!

Other people just couldn't see how beautiful you were. They hated you because you were popular, and ads were beginning to dominate the landscape. And lots of dildo's made ads by abusing your capabilities, straining you with their ugly code that didn't remove event listeners properly. I always did, because I loved you.

They made fun of you because you had to be compiled. Look what those cavemen are doing now, dear ActionScript 3.0. They are compiling Javascript and pushing it to production. They are all fools my dear, unworthy to read even a single line of your gracious typed syntax. We were faster then Java. More animated and fluid then CSS. We were even responsive if we needed to.

But... I have to move on. I don't know if you're still watching over me but I can't deny I've been trying to find some happiness. I think you would have wanted me to. C# is a sweet girl and I'm thankful for her, but I won't ever forget those short few years we had together. They were the absolute best.

Rest well my dear princess.

Comments
  • 6
    Yeah flash content was like huge innovation movement. Most of this stuff was incorporated to browsers like web streaming, rtmfp protocol, jit, canvas, pixelbender etc and branded as html5 it was technology that was way ahead its times.
    Typescript got lots from as3 lol.
    Lots of AAA games were using it as ui compiling with autodesk scaleform.
    Maybe if they opensource all it when they bought macromedia and let community run it who knows.
    Maybe Steve wouldn’t write notes about flash but incorporate it as rendering frontend for their brand new ios and google would do the same and we would see all of flash unique 2d colors all the time.

    Maybe we’re all be wearing vr helmets instead of recreating most of content created in flash using javascript.
    Emscripten and cross compilation of languages to javascript I’ve seen that 10 years ago in flash dudes.
    OpenCV - bitch please I was detecting card deck cards in flash before AI was the thing.

    It was fun and easy to start and create instead of downloading megabytes of crap you could just write movieClip.goToAndStop(10) in some frame and it was amazing.

    Ahhh old times.
    Flash fan 4life.
  • 3
    My experience is different. I was writing svg with the Adobe driver in browser before flash was a thing. I wrote a highly performant facility management system capable of using native cad files for rendering with prehistoric-js in this fashion. They killed it a few years later when it was cheaper to buy macromedia and their runtime. Comparatively, I didn't enjoy actionscript.

    Because of this, Adobe effectively delayed the evolution of browser-supported SVG by about a decade.
  • 2
    @SortOfTested svg implementations between browsers was pain in the ass.
    Streaming video was not existent.
    Youtube was born cause of flash and flv.
    Literally all of this digital revolution was started by couple of deep shits who wanted to play games in browsers.
    Gaming in browser is killed now and there are no reliable alternatives.
  • 3
    @SortOfTested Historically oh irony Steve called flash piece of shit and forced webkit to implement flash features and called it css animations and google forked it cause apple opensourced their web browsing technology to speed up web revolution and kill flash cause steve hated it cause he didn’t created something that was on his beloved apple computer used by everyone to play stupid games and he hated games.
    Then they named those shits in webkit html5 and put all the cool guys who were creating flash content to promote it.
    People who were marketing flash are now working in apple I believe and creating experiences there lol.
    At least some director is now innovation something was responsible for creating iwatch.
    In the meanwhile unity was created ( initially as a browser plugin ) as a response of lack of 3d support in flash player by former macromedia employees. Amount of shit created by flash guys goes on and on. They forced those old boys to move their asses and make something competitive otherwise we would still building games with divs.
    Well that’s my point of view.
  • 0
    I just made a super basic website with flash back in a time I knew shit about programming. Lol
    But were you able to build responsive website with it? From the few sites i remmember none of them were.
  • 0
    i always loved the capabilities of Flash, precisely the ones you mentioned.

    i always hated the weird syntax and logic of ActionScript, it seemed obnoxious.
  • 1
    @WorstVarNames Yes, you could!

    StageScaleMode:noScale combined with an EventListener for Event.RESIZE.

    But you had to write your own implementation for it, in a sense that there were no CSS rules like floating or wrapping. Except for the content of certain text fields. You didn't see that often as most Flash sites were made by designers in a fixed resolution.
  • 0
    @Midnight-shcode It's funny how preferences aren't universal. To me AS3 syntax looked like poetry compared to any non typed web language. even today I find it cleaner to read then C#, if only a little.
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